 I've had four totally different RVs since I've been full-time on the road and so today I'm going to tell you the pros and cons of each one, what I've learned about them and all kinds of stuff you might want to consider if you're in the market for an RV. Happy Sunday Birdwatchers! It's Robin with Creativity RV and like I said today I'm going to be comparing my four totally different rigs which include a B plus camper van, a class C, a fifth wheel and a truck camper. And I've been meaning to do this video for a long time and really quick let me thank my patrons for inspiring me. This is video number two in my new series, How to Save Money and Be Happy by Living in an RV. But quick programming note, you'll notice that I'm still in my fifth wheel because I'm actually having a mechanical issue on my truck. I have the dreaded death wobble on my forward. The good news is that it gives me a chance to get out a couple of other videos that I've been meaning to do from the fifth wheel and I'm going to be telling you about my new composting toilet install and after that about my mouse infestation which I am fighting in here right now and then after that I'm going to tell you all about all the repairs that have had to be done in all these four rigs and that video is a good follow up to this video because it also might help you in making a choice in RVs. And also let me get this out of the way right now. I was not sponsored in any of these rigs. Nobody gave me an RV. I went out and bought every single one of these rigs because I love being on the road. So really quick, let me break down for you why I switched rigs and also how that worked for cost and the depreciation. You know, somebody mentioned in the comments on my last video which was on budget that I didn't mention depreciation which is a real cost. Well, that doesn't really go into a monthly budget but yeah, you have to consider depreciation. So the first rig that I had when I was on the road was a leisure travel van. I didn't just want it because of the footprint and because of how it looked but I also chose that rig because it doesn't depreciate as much as other rigs do. When I had the leisure travel van, which is great if people have LTVs out there, but for me, and I'll go over this more in the Whopper Repairs video, I had a major water leak and on top of that I had major electrical issues and those two things do not work well together. So I got rid of that one and then I made the mistake of jumping too quickly into my next one which was a Tiffin Wayfarer. Now again, I know that there are like rabid Tiffin fans out there. Tiffin is known as a high-end brand for their class A's but they got into the class C market. That's what I got and if I'd done more research I would have found out that there were some problems with that in the Tiffin. I had major structural issues like literally my walls were coming apart. I got rid of that one and by the way, I did come to some agreements with those two manufacturers which I'm not going to go into here but that also helped with the cost when I moved on to another rig. When I was getting rid of the Tiffin, my lifestyle was changing a little bit because I thought my boyfriend at the time might come on the road with me so I chose this fifth wheel that I'm in now as a long-term vehicle and I'm glad I did. I love this fifth wheel. I had it on my own for about a year on the road before my boyfriend came with me. He was on the road with me for a year and then went back to the sticks and bricks. When that happened, the fifth wheel seemed like a lot to me and you know some women cut their hair when they have a breakup. I decided to get a new RV. A couple of years ago when we were hunkered down in the desert during COVID, we decided it was a good time to renovate the RV and like right here where my camera is, we got rid of the couch and I have a big desk and it's nice and bright in here. We got rid of the brown. You guys can actually see videos on that in the past and how we painted and everything in here and so I love it and when I switched to the truck camper, I really didn't want to get rid of the fifth wheel because long term I still wanted to hang on to it. So as I mentioned before, the fifth wheel is mostly in storage and I travel in the truck camper. Now I have done a video before and an article on my blog about how to negotiate the best deal on your rig and how to account for depreciation and also to see you know what the market will allow and how much wiggle room you have when you go into negotiations. So I'll put a link down in the description to a blog post that I did that actually has a bunch of resources. So for my first rig, the Leisure Travel Van, there was more demand in the market than there were actual RVs to buy so when I switched that one over to the Tiffin, it was a wash and then when I switched the Tiffin over to the fifth wheel, I actually got about $24,000 back but of course I had to buy a truck so that went into the truck and the truck camper was $20,000. It's a 2019 Lance 1191. I got it because I wanted to go more off-road and I wanted to be more nimble and it was a good space for just me alone. So for this video, I went back and calculated the total depreciation across the five and a half years I've been on the road from rig to rig to rig and basically in depreciation I've lost $5,500 a year. That's a lot less than rent. So I think $5,500 a year is pretty good. I mean honestly that's like three months rent where I come from. Okay now I'm going to go through five things that I can compare between the rigs including gas, water, weight, drivability, that kind of thing and then I'm going to go into other things that you probably want to consider when you're buying an RV and you do not want to miss that part. When it comes to gas mileage, the Leisure Travel Van was the hands down winner. It was on a Sprinter Mercedes chassis and I got over 22 miles to the gallon. I mean which was just a gift. It was almost like driving a car. The Tiffin was the same footprint as the Leisure Travel Van. They were both 25 feet long. The difference is that the Tiffin was a Class C so it had the overhang over the front and that one only got 16 miles to the gallon. The fifth wheel, I mean obviously is the worst because I have a big F350 monster truck and a 35 foot fifth wheel so it gets terrible gas mileage. Diesel is nine miles to the gallon and with the truck camper which is also massive, it's 12 feet long and hangs over the end of my truck. With that one I get maybe 11 miles to the gallon. My truck alone gets about 14.3 miles to the gallon without anything on it. The next thing I want to compare is water storage. Now if you're going to be a boondocker and that means you're not hooked up at an RV park and you have to go out and camp and bring everything with you, how much water you can carry in your rig is a huge deal and it also goes into weight which is going to be the next thing I talk about which honestly I think is the most major thing to consider when you're purchasing an RV but let's talk about water first. My leisure travel van had a freshwater tank of 30 gallons. The Tiffin Wayfarer had a tank of 38 gallons. The fifth wheel is the winner in this category because it holds 93 gallons of fresh water and the layout's truck camper holds 35 gallons. You might be wondering how much water I actually use when I'm out boondocking and my truck camper which is 35 gallons, I can go for two weeks on that water but I'm very frugal with the water. How I do my dishes and how I shower and all that stuff matters when you're trying to make that 35 gallon stretch. In the fifth wheel for two people that 93 gallons would last us two weeks for all the dishes and the showers and the drinking water and just for reference I can go through 100 gallons when I'm hooked up at an RV park in three days if I'm not being frugal. You know if I'm taking really long showers every day and I let the water run while I'm doing the dishes and that kind of thing and that might be what you're used to in a house just for some reference but you know if you want a boondock you figure out how to make it work. Now here's the important thing to know about water. It's heavy. Water I think weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon I'm sure you guys will correct me if I have that off a little bit. When I was getting ready to go on the road and I watched a bunch of YouTube videos nobody ever talked about weight and I had no point of reference and I didn't really understand how important it was and I'll tell you I learned real fast how important it was. In fact out of everything I'm talking to you about today I think weight is the most important thing because especially if you're a full timer it will determine how much stuff you can bring with you on the road safely. Now this isn't a video about weight but I am going to be going through three basic definitions so you can understand how the carrying capacity changes. When you go to buy an RV inside of one of the bay doors normally you're going to see a yellow sticker it's required by law that says GVWR which is gross vehicle weight rating. GVWR is the maximum weight that you can carry in your rig fully loaded and remain safe. The next definition or acronym that you might see when you look at an RV is UVW. Now it's important to know that this may vary by manufacturer some might count the batteries or something some might not but for most manufacturers the UVW includes the basic weight of your RV plus a full tank of gas and maybe engine fluids and maybe propane and sometimes just to make it more confusing you're going to see some people talking about dry weight or a sticker that has dry weight. Dry weight is almost the same as UVW except for it doesn't include the fluids so it's just basically the rig. The next thing and the most important thing if you want to go full time is something called OCCC which is occupant and cargo carrying capacity. Now this is all the stuff that you're going to add into your rig. Now water is a huge component of this right the bigger your water tank the more of course it's going to weigh so for example in the fifth wheel I can hold 93 gallons I'd have to multiply that by 8.3 and add that in to my OCCC but not only that I have to add in the weight of people the weight of the fluids in the gray tank and in the black tank if you have that the weight of the water in your water heater and then all your food and all your stuff and look if you're thinking of going full time it's not like you pack some clothes for the weekend and your fishing pole and you're out the door you have to have everything with you that you might need on the road and there are a lot of people and me included when I first started that said oh there's no way my stuff is going to weigh more than 500 pounds it does it weighs a lot and if you want to know how much weight you're carrying in your RV it's really simple all you have to do is go to a truck stop for about 10 bucks they'll let you get on the truck scales now let me break down for you how much weight I could carry in each one of these rigs the GVWR on the Tiffin as an example was 11,030 pounds now that seems like a lot right but then you have to take the UVW which is the weight from the manufacturer out of that that was 98.95 then I had to consider the weight of the leveling jacks and the solar panels on the roof and then that water tank is 300 pounds of water and if there's a couple of people let's say 350 pounds that only left 335 pounds of stuff that I could bring with me it's really hard to stay under weight if you're a full timer in a rig like this especially if you have two people now let's look at the Tiffin I only have 850 pounds left to carry and so then I have to consider again the water the people the fuel the tanks the stuff now for me if I was going to consider it again I'd have to think really hard about getting a Mercedes Sprinter they're great and I know a lot of people love them I know a lot of people don't because they're difficult to repair they're expensive to repair and they just aren't burly enough they don't carry a lot of weight now on the fifth wheel of course it got a lot better because the gvwr on the fifth wheel is 15,000 pounds the UVW was 12,100 and that left me a whopping 2,300 pounds I could carry in my fifth wheel after I had a ton of solar added now in my truck camper you have to calculate this a little bit differently because it depends on what your truck can carry what you want to look for here is the payload rating if you're looking at a truck camper it's really important so inside the door of your truck you're going to see a sticker that says something like the combined occupant and cargo total should not exceed x number of pounds that's your payload capacity now I'm lucky because I have such a big truck my payload capacity is 3,580 I don't remember exactly what the lance weighs but I think it's 1800 or 1900 pounds so I have to take that out of that number and then what's left is what I can load which is a lot because the weight is on top of the truck instead of being pulled behind the truck which is a benefit but of course the truck camper is small and I can't hold a lot of water so I don't go anywhere close to going over capacity in the truck camper which is a bonus so look if you're going part-time weight rating might not be as important but if you're going to be a full-timer it is wicked important okay now let's talk about drivability when I first started my dad actually thought I should get a travel trailer and I remember I was like I couldn't possibly do a travel trailer because I don't know how to hook that up and there's a sway bars and it's scary and it fish tails and I don't know how to do that and I think that's why I gravitated more towards the B plus because it seemed like it was easier to drive and I'll tell you the B plus was easy to drive when it wasn't windy yeah it gets great gas mileage it does great driving through a city I can drive into a grocery store parking lot no problem but in the wind the tiffin and the leisure travel van were blown all over the road I wouldn't drive normally if it was over like 13 miles an hour for the wind now if you saw my video on learning to drive the fifth wheel it was really easy I couldn't believe it was like nothing after about an hour and the wind would have to get up to about 23 miles an hour before I felt it now on the truck camper it's super easy to drive the thing I had to get used to the first day was that you could see the overhang a little bit it's like wearing a baseball cap and it like messed with my peripheral vision in the beginning but now it's like nothing the only thing I worry about with the truck camper is the height now of course your camping options vary when I went from my smaller rigs to my fifth wheel the most common question I got was is it hard to find camping it's not as easy if you want to stay in an RV park or a national forest campground or a state park or you just need a last-minute reservation length really is important a lot of campgrounds don't allow rigs over 25 feet and most RV parks are booked up sooner with the big spaces and especially the drive-thru spaces I absolutely had less options in the fifth wheel for camping than I did in my other rigs but for me I normally boondock so it's really easy for me to get the fifth wheel out into some big wide open space it's no problem at all and once I get out there if I'm going to be boondocking for a couple of weeks it's nice to have all the living space so that gets me into the last part of this video where I'm going to talk to you about things you might want to consider that you may never have thought of before when you're choosing a rig these are all things that I've learned along the way and I hope that it's helpful the first thing is heating costs it is expensive to heat a bigger rig like this one if you watched the budget video last week the propane cost for this rig can be triple what it was in my smaller rigs especially when I was camping in the winter the next thing is if you have a pet when I first started on the road you guys know I have my cat big boy he just stayed in the b-plus and he just stayed in the sea the biggest problem in those two rigs was where to put the litter box I put it in the passenger wheel well when I switched to a tall stand-up box most people I know put it in the shower but that means every time you take a shower you have to take out the litter box which is a pain in the pitook now with the fifth wheel I couldn't leave the cat back in the camper while I was driving so I'd have to take him from the fifth wheel into the cab of the truck and then take him back when I got to my location with the truck camper thanks to somebody on youtube I figured out how to make a phone pass through between the back window of my truck and the window in my truck camper so I keep the litter box in the front passenger wheel well of my truck and the cat can go back and forth as much as he wants the next thing to consider especially if you're a boondocker is solar space when I first started out on the road you might remember that I did a video called the ABCs of power which was always be charging that's because on my first two rigs I could only fit you know one or two little solar panels on the roof and I had to be really frugal with my power usage and when I have my inverter on and every light had to be off and the water heater always had to be off and then I still had to have a little power station and all kinds of little rechargeable devices that I charged during the day the good thing about going to a bigger rig like in the fifth wheel is that you have a ton of roof space in my fifth wheel I think I have 1200 watts of storage I've got six lithium batteries and a 3000 watt inverter and honestly I never turn the water pump off I never turn the inverter off it's a game changer it's like living in a tiny house the next thing to consider is what I call the hassle factor now it's true in a camper van or a little class C you can jump right up into the driver's seat and just go you might have to put in a slide you might have to put up some stabilizing legs if you have them but it's a lot easier now with the fifth wheel it's a completely different story I'm going to keep it real breaking down and setting up camp in the fifth wheel is a much bigger hassle than it was in my first two vehicles there's three slides you have to bring in and you have to take care of those slides and you have to clean off the top of the slides and then there's the legs which you have to take care of and you have to hook it up to the truck and unhook it from the truck and raise it and lower it and it is a hassle now you get more living space for that but there's a lot to learn now there are a lot of great resources out there so I won't get too much into it but with the truck camper you have to learn how to load it unload it tie it down and make sure that you get the right truck camper for your truck the next thing to consider is your propane fill I never thought about it in my first two rigs because in my B plus and in my C the propane fill was just on the side of the rig so I would go to a propane place and the guy would come out and fill it up like a gas tank with the fifth wheel I could not just pull up at a propane place I had to take out two really big canisters and have them filled and then put them back in which are very heavy I could do it on the fifth wheel on the truck camper I have two big propane tanks that I have to put up into my truck camper on a slide and honestly I can't do it I can't do it when they're full and I hate asking people for help it is the thing that I hate most about my truck camper normally what I've done is when I get to the propane place I tell the guy look I can get these tanks out but I can't get them back in would you mind helping me I'm happy to tip you the next thing you want to consider is if you're camping in the winter or you think you're going to be camping in bad weather every year I try and spend the holidays near my family so I'm usually in Colorado for about six weeks and a winter camp you need a hookup and so I would take my leisure travel van or my tiffin to a state park or an RV park but here's what you want to consider you can feel really cooped up if you have a small rig and you're stuck inside for weeks the fifth wheel is a dream to camp in in the winter I mean look at some of these pictures it's like you're inside it's cozy there's a little fireplace you can kick back the cat loves that he sits in the windows and you have this amazing view and honestly I haven't camped in the truck camper in the snow I don't think I'd like it because there is not even a space in the truck camper to lounge and you know that's another thing to think about the truck camper I use the dinette as a desk and then all my lounging if I'm inside is done up in the bed and you don't have the big windows in the truck camper you don't have a view the next thing to consider is your lifestyle I mean are you gonna go go go if you want to go across the country and see the national parks or you know go to minor league baseball games or museums or whatever a camper van or a small class c would be great because it's easy to get to those places and the gas mileage is better but if you have a lot of toys or a boat or you just want to bring a lot of stuff with you you might need a bigger rig and if you want a stealth camp like you can see I did here my leisure travel van in the city you probably want a rig that looks less like an RV than a fifth wheel does another thing to consider is mobility I know people that got fifth wheels and then didn't like them just because of the two little steps they go up to the bedroom going up and down those steps and going down the front steps in a fifth wheel is kind of a big deal if you've got bad knees or a bad hip I actually know somebody that fell off the stairs of their fifth wheel and broke their hip a truck camper would not be good for somebody who has trouble getting in and out of the bed you might want to get a class c where you can climb right up into the driver's seat and then go directly back into the camper another big thing to consider is space for your laundry and your trash when you live in a small rig like a b or a b plus or a c most of those rigs do not have a pull out for a trash can or space for a laundry hamper for me my trash in my laundry was in the shower which meant that I had to take it out and put it back in every time I wanted to take a shower in the fifth wheel I have room for a laundry hamper and I actually have a pullout drawer that has two trash cans in it so that's a bonus for a bigger rig you also want to consider that the more components you have in your RV the more there is to repair so if you just have a b camper van no big deal something breaks just swap it out you keep going and the fifth wheel there's a lot more to break you're going down bumpy roads a lot of the connections are plastic you know you always have to tighten the screws in your cabinets the awning can break the slides can break the seals can break now this can happen in all rigs but there's just more of it in a rig like a fifth wheel that you have to consider and finally another big thing to consider is that if you have an all-in-one like a class b or class c or class a if you're a full timer when you have to do a repair you might have to go off the road for that that's why I switched to a fifth wheel and then a truck camper because if I have to have major repairs done it's okay I still have a truck where I can go and camp more stay in a hotel or go visit someone that's it you guys I know this one was a whopper but I hope it gave you some things to consider when you're looking for your next RV if you have any questions or comments or you have an experience that you think people can learn from please do put it down in the comments below I'll see you guys next week until then everybody have happy travels and be free